“Some Thoughts on the Assumption of Mary”    

Beginning around 1970, Grisez often pointed out the timeliness of Pius XII's solemn definition of the doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. After more than a decade, Grisez in this brief article gathered together his thoughts about that teaching’s significance, in the hope that homilists would find one or another of them helpful.

The article is copyright © Catholic Polls, Inc. 1984; all rights reserved.

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“Mary and Christian Moral Principles”    

After Grisez’s Christian Moral Principles was published in 1983, those who were planning the 1985 meeting of the Mariological Society of America invited him to present a paper. Preparing to do so led him to reflect more deeply on the brief mentions of Mary in the New Testament and to reread Vatican II’s teaching about her. He then related what he gleaned from those sources to his own work, and tried to articulate how Mary is a principle of Christian moral life.

The paper is copyright © 1985 The Mariological Society of America; all rights reserved.

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“Mary, Mother of Jesus: Sketch of a Theology”    

On 1 May 1997, Grisez helped a graduate student at Oxford, who happened to be a non-Catholic, with the use she wished to make of his and his colleagues’ account of natural law. When they finished talking philosophy, she asked if he would entertain some questions she had about Catholic belief and practice. The last of them concerned Mary. Since he had another appointment, he was able to answer only briefly. But after he returned home, he wrote and sent off a fuller answer.

Having set out a theology of Mary that he thought was both faithful to Catholic teaching and likely to be acceptable to Protestants, Grisez revised and submitted the sketch to the editor of New Blackfriars. It is copyright © The English Dominicans 1997; all rights reserved.

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The young lady later became an Anglican, and eventually an Episcopalian priest.